There is a really good piece up at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media that looks at the top five most prominent issues raised in “ClimateGate”, analyzes the relevant emails in context, and finds some concerns but not much wrong–with the notable exception of the suggestion that emails subject to a Freedom of Information request be deleted. The article’s author, Zeke Hausfather, concludes:

It is unfortunate, if perhaps not surprising, that the quotes from the e-mails that have gotten the most publicity from skeptics and in some media strongly distort the views and actions of the scientists in question, contributing to a perception of collusion to manipulate the climate data itself.

Nothing contained in the e-mails, however, suggests that global temperature records are particularly inaccurate or, worse, that they have been manipulated to show greater warming. The certainly troubling conduct exposed in some of the e-mails has little bearing on the fundamental science that strongly indicates that the world is warming and that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause.

You should read the whole piece, for it clearly and soberly shows just how much this has been blown out of proportion.

Comments (77)

V.O.R.

For me the *real* tragedy of “Climategate” is the missed opportunity.

What if CRU had sold access to it’s private e-mail archives? Preferably on a pay-per-min or subscription basis.

When we’re talking about the media by far the most growth is in the Confirmation Bias sector. For some major *ka-ching* CRU wouldn’t have had to spend any time or money vetting or explaining the e-mails. So we’re not talking a significant drain on their resources: Just make them available if you’ve got the $ and let the anti-climate media-sphere supply all the spin and PR CRU could want. More than they could want, in fact.

Of course CRU would have had to lawyer-up before-hand to lock down the IP, and get ready for serious copyright infringement. But I believe they’d consider self-funding lawsuits against prominent deniers worth the trouble.

Sigh. To misquote Mailer: “The horror of the Twenty-First Century was not the size of each new event, but the paucity of its monetization. “

“I know I probably don’t need to mention this, but just to insure absolutely clarify on this, I’m providing these for your own personal use, since you’re a trusted colleague. So please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of “dirty laundry” one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things…”

The Climategate emails written by UN-contributing scientists underscore the need for the United States to convene its own objective, transparent Climate Truth Commission. It defies common sense that we outsource our climate science to the UN then allow it to serve as both judge (IPCC) and advocate (Kyoto Protocol, Copenhagen).

Thank you for you and your commenters’ reporting on the issue surrounding climategate over the recent weeks. As someone who calls themself a skeptic but is more of a fence-sitter on the topic of anthropogenic climate change, I stumbled across your blog and posts randomly by way of Google.

Thanks to the information seen here, I have been turned into a person who now fully accepts the role of humans in shaping our planet’s climate. What “turned” me were the insightful comments of climate change supporters on your blog, who seem to be very familiar with the science and are able to support their statements with scientific evidence. Conversely, many of the skeptics commenting on your blog appear to have no case, as they cannot back up their points with evidence when challenged and resort to childish arguing tactics instead. If what I’ve seen here are all that skeptics have going for them, they don’t have much of a case.

Thank you for your reporting on this issue, and I hope you will keep it up in the future.

Politicians need to take note that the general public is not necessarily agreeing with or denying the ClimateGate situation. The general public is tired of the hair-splitting, bickering, name-calling, and threats that continue to spew forth from policitians like a CFC-laden aerosol can that’s been shot with 12-gauge buckshot.

Steve Makar: Most of the scientific world has “seen the data.” Perhaps you should go read up on it for yourself. No one’s hiding it from you…or anyone else. Willful ignorance is no excuse, buddy.

Jose: So you’re a “the climate isn’t even changing” denialist. Nice. Tell me then, if the world is “not warming up” as you claim, how do you account for global signatures in species ranges shifting, sea ice/glacier loss, sea level rise, and rising temperature trends? I don’t want to hear a self-righteous lecture about causation – you said “the earth is not warming up whether it is caused by sun spots or my SUV.”

I just happen to be a registered Republican who studied paleoclimatology in college, and, to a lesser extent, graduate school. Based on what I have seen of the data, I would say that the case for anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is quite persuasive as noted here:

While I will concede that there is substantially more scientific data supporting the reality of biological evolution than there is for AGW, the data that exists for AGW is quite sound, contrary to increasingly inane claims from the likes of Moreno, Inhofe, and… surprise, surprise…. the Discovery Institute (the central “nexus” of Intelligent Design creationist thought… and if you doubt this, then take a look at http://www.discovery.org and http:/uncommondescent.com for proof that the Intelligent Design creationists are AGW denialists too).

I read the original article by Zeke Hausfather and drew quite different conclusions. Somehow Zeke had very little to say about the computer codes revealed in Climategate. These programs appear to be prima facie evidence of incompetence or even outright fraud. If these were used to manipulate data published under peer review, Climategate will become an unstoppable steamroller.

Thank you for you and your commenters’ reporting on the issue surrounding climategate over the recent weeks. As someone who calls themself a skeptic but is more of a fence-sitter on the topic of anthropogenic climate change, I stumbled across your blog and posts randomly by way of Google.

Thanks to the information seen here, I have been turned into a person who now fully accepts the role of humans in shaping our planet’s climate. What “turned” me were the insightful comments of climate change supporters on your blog, who seem to be very familiar with the science and are able to support their statements with scientific evidence. Conversely, many of the skeptics commenting on your blog appear to have no case, as they cannot back up their points with evidence when challenged and resort to childish arguing tactics instead. If what I’ve seen here are all that skeptics have going for them, they don’t have much of a case.

Thank you for your reporting on this issue, and I hope you will keep it up in the future.

I’m not a skeptic, but I’ve noticed the same thing: the skeptics here are wholly unable to support their arguments with anything outside of speculation.

If RE is a real person, skeptics, you’re losing this battle….at least on the blog. Time to put up or shut up. Let’s see your evidence.

It’s normal for species to move from one place to another in search of the proverbial grass is greener on the other side. It’s been going on for millions of years.

The ground rises and falls as tectonic plates move under the planet’s surface. The older Hawaiian Islands are sinking as new islands are being formed.

It gets reported when ice melts but there is no/little mention of it when it reforms.

Probably the biggest damage caused by the alarmists is the legitimate effort to remove harmful pollutants from the air. When the EPA declared war on CO2 they set back the progress of the clean air movement 50 years.

Since the primary greenhouse gas is water vapor, why didn’t they declare water a pollutant? They had to go for number two CO2 because the name sounds like it is bad.

The most useful contribution of Climategate to science will be to force a re-examination of data, statistical algorithms, and code that were never inspected too critically, apart from the efforts of a few heroic individuals such as Steve McIntyre.

The politics and science of climate today are rife with confirmation bias, among both the skeptics and the believers in catastrophic AGW. For those who don’t have a political axe to grind, but sincerely want to understand nature, an honest, open assessment of the data can only be a good thing.

Then if “the Earth is cooling,” Jose, explain the 40% loss in sea ice and glacier melt in the past few decades. Third-grade physical science debunks your brand of silly, uninformed denialism there.

And provide the empirical data showing that ‘tectonic plates’ are responsible for the observed global sea level rise, please. If you can show convincing data, I’ll agree with you – honest. But if you’re stating that off of “this is just what I think,” I’ll appropriately label you a fool.

1. The Northwest Passage was open to shipping for the first time since European explorers arrived in North America. That’s evidence of global warming. Glaciers in Bolivia are disappearing. Thats’ evidence of global warming.

2. Mr. Joses’ claim that the climate is getting cooler is an example of the big lie. Josef Goebbels would be proud. This is based on the observation that 1998 temperatures have not been exceeded in any year (except possibly 2005) since then. However, why pick out 1998? If one picks out 1997, every year since then has been hotter, ergo global warming is proved by the same logic. Any statistician worth his salt would look at the result for 1998 and suspect that it is an outlier.

The most useful contribution of Climategate to science will be to force a re-examination of data, statistical algorithms, and code that were never inspected too critically, apart from the efforts of a few heroic individuals such as Steve McIntyre.

In other words, Dana H. the Carefully Worded Denialist just said the following:

“I’ll ignore that the data and code survived both the rigorous test of completely anonymous grant review and peer-review at the level of publication and hurl a completely unfounded accusation – nay, a lie – about the nature of science.”

So, by saying “anthropogenic emissions” that you could possibly save this research project that would of had all the free-citizens of the world to change the way we live our lives, when it is the big corporations and Industrialized world that are the main contributors.

They faked tree-ring evidence, and now Al Gore’s Artic censors are showing arguably exaggerated stats.; and even suppression of pre-review. This is serious stuff for the scientific establishment.

The Sun is heating the planet, and the politics of the World Climate Summit is just as dangerous. So, just relax, take a breath, and remember this is science. If something just doesn’t checkout, we reject it. Bruce Lee illustrated this philosophically as the metaphor, “absorb the useful, and reject the useless.”

Hey you’re the one that wrote the book about scientific literacy, so it’s no wonder why we would have not seen this coming…

Not sure about Jose, but I’m not a denialist and I don’t dispute the fact that Earth is warming at the moment. But I consider the AGW theory to be incorrect.

As for the data – well, there are many people now looking at the data, and they often find very unexpected results. There seem to be problems with New Zealand data. There seem to be problems with Australian data. There is obvious bias and cherry-picking done by CRU with Russian data. I glimsed something about USA data as well but cannot attest for this.

There are also datasets available from NASA and GHCN – but they seem to be extremely interbred with HadCRU (IIRC both NASA GISS and HadCRU are based on GHCN to a substantial degree). There’s also a Japanese dataset, but Japanese data demonstrates a flat warming trend throughout the second half of XIX and the entire XX century – which doesn’t correlate with the exponential scale of human activity growth during the period.

Now tell me this. You are suggesting others to go and look for data. HAVE YOU GONE AND LOOKED? I’d be delighted to see at least one pro-AGW scientist present an analysis of the climate data comparable to those currently done by sceptics all over the world. Perhaps you know of at least one such research? If you do, could you provide a link? I would be glad to read it.

1. The Northwest Passage was open to shipping for the first time since European explorers arrived in North America. That’s evidence of global warming. Glaciers in Bolivia are disappearing. Thats’ evidence of global warming.

2. Mr. Joses’ claim that the climate is getting cooler is an example of the big lie. Josef Goebbels would be proud. This is based on the observation that 1998 temperatures have not been exceeded in any year (except possibly 2005) since then. However, why pick out 1998? If one picks out 1997, every year since then has been hotter, ergo global warming is proved by the same logic. Any statistician worth his salt would look at the result for 1998 and suspect that it is an outlier.

Jose is quickly being outed as a lying denialist who cannot back up his accusations because, simply, they are lies.

There are now two separate people calling for your evidence, Jose. Extraordinary claims must be backed up by extraordinary evidence.

Let’s see it Jose.

Now.

Your evidence, please.

I’m calling you out – show us your evidence, sir, or be deemed a liar.

…and thus Jose’s true intentions for climate denial become apparent: climate change doesn’t agree with Jose’s political persuasion. He is the Politically-Motivated Denialist, or the Convenience Denialist.

J Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University, says he believes the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

He is astonished they “misread 2350 as 2035″.

In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.

“Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres by the year 2035,” the report said.

It suggested three quarters of a billion people who depend on glacier melt for water supplies in Asia could be affected.

But Professor Cogley has found a 1996 document by a leading hydrologist, VM Kotlyakov, that mentions 2350 as the year by which there will be massive and precipitate melting of glaciers.

“The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates – its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres by the year 2350,” Mr Kotlyakov’s report said.

Mr Cogley says it is astonishing that none of the 10 authors of the 2007 IPCC report could spot the error and “misread 2350 as 2035″.

“I do suggest that the glaciological community might consider advising the IPCC about ways to avoid such egregious errors as the 2035 versus 2350 confusion in the future,” says Mr Cogley.

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;

Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;

Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;

Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;

The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;

Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;

Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;

Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;
Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so.

First off, your “petition” originally listed the names of Dr. James Hansen and several others who, after threatening lawsuits since they were never even approached about the petition, had their names removed.

Second off, you and your “petition” are lying. Embarrassingly, pathetically lying. How do I know? Consider the following claims (er, lies) from your petition. Each point in italics is something that you claim science has “utterly failed” in proving. Au contraire! Each cited article below italics provides proof of the points that you claim have not been investigated. I rise to your challenge, denialist liar!!!!

Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries

…and that’s just a small, tiny sampling. So, Jim the Denialist, tell us. Do you 1.) just ignore all those peer-reviewed, independent publications and pretend they don’t exist (ignorance is bliss!), or 2.) have you successfully debunked each and every one of them? If the answer is #2, let’s have your evidence!!! If you can post evidence to refute those studies, I shall become a climate skeptic myself.

As it stands, however, you, sir, are lying about the state of the science. Now the onus is on you. Prove to us that you are not lying, denialist scum of the lowest order.

Of the names you list in that letter, the only one who would be considered credible is micropaleontologist and paleoclimatologist Bjorn Malmgren (Though I know of another noted paleoclimatologist – one of my college professors – Robley K. Matthews who is a strong skeptic of AGW.). Ask yourself why Malmgren is the only paleoclimatologist of any stature who signed that letter. If you give it some substantial thought, maybe you’ll stumble upon the realization that AGW is accepted as valid science by paleoclimatologists.

You can use jedi tricks to tell people that the earth is in meltdown but after awhile the trick wears off. You have to be completely oblivious to reality to claim that the rescued emails did not lessen the jedi trick.

Thanks for posting this since it reaffirms an independent analysis by the Associated Press which reached the same conclusions. Unfortunately I don’t believe it will persuade climate change denialists.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hey, John, Go ahead and Google Seth Borenstein, the writer for the Associated Press who was one of five to examine the “hacked” emails.

Obviously, Mr. Jose is totally incompetent to comment on this subject as his dismissal of the likelihood that 1998 is an outlier shows he knows nothing about statistics. Furthermore he failed to address the issue of the opening of the Northwest Passage to shipping in the summer of 2009. In that at least, he is consistent. I have posted that comment on at least 4 blogs on multiple threads and have yet to receive a cogent response from the deniers. Apparently, they believe that if they ignore it, it will go away. Ditto withs the reduction of glaciers in Bolivia.

I have posted that comment on at least 4 blogs on multiple threads and have yet to receive a cogent response from the deniers. Apparently, they believe that if they ignore it, it will go away. Ditto withs the reduction of glaciers in Bolivia.

I’ve noticed the same trend. The denialists talk a big game, but when you challenge them, ask for clarification, and/or present them with cold, hard data that say the opposite of what they’re claiming, you get: i.) silence, or ii.) a shameless attempt at question evasion.

For example, Barton was a very vocal skeptic on the blog here a few days ago until several of us started asking him to clarify his points and back them up with facts. As soon as that started, he left and hasn’t posted since.

Two days ago a skeptic here was talking about how global temperatures were increasing but CO2 wasn’t a driver. When I asked him to back up that claim with evidence, he suddenly entered into a question dodge and began pulling up an obscure dataset where he had cherry-picked a decade out of several millenia and began saying that global temperatures were unequivocally cooling. When I pointed out that he totally contradicted himself (the Earth is warming one argument, then cooling the next), he seemed confused and went onto some other point. The fact that he destroyed his credibility with zero work on my part seemed to go totally over his head.

This kind of thing happens with the skeptics here over and over and over and over again. I’ve yet ot see a single skeptic, and I mean a single one, back up their accusations about the science of climate change with anything. Until I see something to change my mind, the kind of people we’re
dealing here seem to uninformed, half-witted people who simply like a controversy and who are wallowing in willful ignorance, unwilling to educate themselves about the very science they’re trying to dispute. I also think mmore than half of them are unwitting political pawns, simply reguritating what they’ve head their favorite radio host/blogger say. It’s pathetic, really.

The liar scientists got caught and this has given a basis for real scientists to call their bluff.

And yes SLC, it is pathetic. Science has been corrupted by the need to pay for the nice landscaping around the government funded research facilities.

I don’t have to regurgitate what I heard on radio. All I had to do was read through some of the emails. I don’t know if I would call them a smoking gun or a mushroom cloud but they fall somewhere in between.

You can see the authoritarian mindset at work: “A few scientists lied, so the entire theory is wrong!” Creationists do the same thing, claiming “Darwin was a racist! Haeckel faked his drawings! Evolution is refuted!”

The logic at work is not the one normally used in science, where errors are expected to occur and an argument from authority is considered invalid. To an authoritarian this is inconceivable because truth and authority are more or less identical. A corollary is that a scientific consensus from which the authoritarian dissents is proof of a conspiracy.

Discussion is difficult when the participants have different logical standards.

(This is not to say that the CRU scientists lied or that Darwin was racist, of course.)

It is very easy to recognise a cargo cult scientologist. Here is the their entire repertoire:

1) endless repetition, repeating the same messages over and over with different variations and combinations
2. Disfiguration: discrediting the opposition with slander and crude parodies
3. Unanimity: presenting your point of view as if every right headed person agrees with it while smearing those who doubt it using appeals of famous people, experts and so called consensus; hiding/ excluding others from the underlying basis / information of your position.
4. Transfusion: manipulating the prevailing values of the public to your own advantage
5. Simplification: reducing all facts into a comparison between ‘good and evil’ and ‘friends and enemies’

The emails and programmer’s notes reveal the vast context of ten years of intellectual corruption. They were not doing science- they were disgracing it.

The globe has been getting warmer. That’s why you can plant corn in Iowa and wheat in Kansas and why Canadians frolic in the snow. The glaciers melted. I’ll have more of that, please.

The IPCC will investigate itself.
Already 1700 subjects (scientists) have been compelled to sign a loyalty oath affirming the outcome of it in advance of its completion, so you may be sure consensus will emerge in due course.

The person who deserves the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism is Steve McIntyre at http://climateaudit.org/ where dissection of the details is being done. The trick was to HIDE.
Is there a synonym for the word HIDE than means anything other than HIDE?

If you ask a scientist why nothing can move faster than the speed of light, he doesn’t tell you a terrible story about how koala bears will die if you don’t believe the theory is right, does he?
The UN served this to the children of the world:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_9mjBUSDng
This makes me very angry.

It’s easy enough to get the emails and the other files. A firsthand look will give you the right to draw a conclusion. There are 1073 text files, so it will take a while. Interestingly, I was unable to cherry pick anything that wasn’t about fudging, faking, supressing dissent, ousting editors, etc.
It didn’t take thousands of scientists to conspire- it only took a handful to fake the data everybody else relied on.

These comment threads are tidy little laboratories for psychology. Mention the authoritarian personality and an authoritarian arrives to demonstrate. Likewise the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The denialists are probably mostly unaware that they’re repeating arguments crafted by flacks working for the oil and coal companies, who have hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. It’s actually easier to deny that you’re doing the bidding of some of the wealthiest industries on the planet (since you’re not actually getting paid) than to deny climate change, which to the average individual is so slight as to be swamped by seasonal temperature swings.

Although you’d think than anyone alleging a conspiracy would be asking which side stands to make the most money, they generally don’t. People would rather believe in ridiculous things like a cabal of shadowy Jewish international bankers (George Soros is spooky!) than things they’re actually familiar with, like Chevron or Exxon-Mobil.

If you’re not a climate alarmist you must be working for or repeating the rantings of the evil oil companies. Or maybe the evil insurance companies are behind it. To solve these problems let’s advance government run institutions that will declare what facts are real and mandate solutions through higher taxes and more regulation.

Then some day when the political party changes you will be mandated to go to church and come to Jesus. It doesn’t matter who you make the villain, it will all come back to haunt you if you continue down the road of corruption which is clearly in these emails.

You must be a rocket scientist. You have figured out that I don’t like big government and high taxes. The existence of a huge Federal deficit is only an illusion promoted by conspiracy theorists. What is a mere $100 billion handed out by Hillary care each year to promote climate hysteria in developing countries?

Now it doesn’t matter that the rescued emails provide a trail of corruption.

I think it’s unfortunate that blogs like this always descend to name-calling *on both sides* instead of a balanced look at the evidence. bilbo’s demands for data while citing the very authors who have been completely discredited, using the process that has clearly been shown to be corrupt, is surprising. Is that really all you have, while demanding someone else bring data? Perhaps you should consider the burden of proof is on you.

Jose, there are many more sources of very credible data sources that both discredit the analysis that bilbo is relying on, as well as do more to outline the multiple other factors at play in the climate. Why don’t you take some time to cite those, instead of simply providing short and less effective answers?

Finally, with Pachauri and Gore, among many others, having been shown to have already made millions with a stance to make much more, the supposed Big Oil financial connections are a pretty weak argument. Those espousing AGW theories benefit immensely financially. Follow the money. You think Big Oil is a large industry? Wait until you see what Big Carbon in the form of carbon trading could become.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. The topic I am writing against is the downplaying of rescued emails known as Climategate.

I am not here to prove or disprove global warming as much as to keep alive the existence of rescued emails that reveal a blatant corruption of science to achieve political goals.

I have no doubt that Climategate had a major influence on the summit in Copenhagen. That in of itself is sufficient to debunk the thesis of this blog.

In the wake of no legally binding agreement out of Copenhagen I expect to see lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, resignations, and a general skepticism of the rhetoric emanating from climate alarmists.

The scientific data for anthropogenic global warming, while not nearly as robust or as persuasive as that for biological evolution, does exist and is quite credible, with or without ClimateGate.

@ Jose –

Those involved in ClimateGate were involved in arguing over conclusions made with “massaged” data, and I should observe that there are other instances where data has been “massaged” merely to improve its statistical robustness (In plain English to reduce the presence of outliers so that the major trend is more quickly recognized as the result of a suitable statistical test.). This happens in physics, chemistry as well as biology and other natural sciences. Were we to follow your logic to its inescapable conclusion, should we start throwing out the results of clinical trials, engineering stress tests, and other “practical” uses of scientific data simply because the data may have been “corrupted” due to data “massaging”?

This blog is about whether Climategate is an issue or a non-issue. How the data was “massaged” and what data was excluded because it didn’t support the desired results is going to be subjected to the legal process of discovery.

Without Climategate I doubt that this issue would be receiving the amount of attention that it has now.

I stand by my contention – which I arrived independently of Chris Mooney’s – that ClimateGate is really “Much Ado About Nothing”. Since I do possess a background in biostatistics, I realize that what the climate scientists did with that data was legally permissible from both a legal and scientific perspective. Whether what they did was ethically valid, I will leave to someone else who is trained in ethics and the philosophy of science.

Your background in biostatistics notwithstanding, I have heard no one on either side of this debate try and defend what the climate scientists have appeared to have done as being legally or scientifically correct. You say “legally permissible from both a legal and scientific perspective” which is an odd framing. Legal from a legal perspective, really? Seems redundant. The law requires full disclosure of the data, which they failed to do — of which laws do you speak?

Legal from a scientific perspective? The two aren’t normally related to each other. From the scientific perspective, even those who favor the AGW side of the argument have admitted that the corruption of the peer review process as well as the withholding of data is not appropriate. Even they have called for removal of the scientists. The scientific method expects complete transparency which this group is on record as avoiding.

I am not a statistician, or a scientist, but have been involved in running clinical trials businesses. What has happened here, had it been on a drug trial, would have long ago resulted in blacklisting by the FDA, if not worse.

I suggest that there are several other emails that expliciitly show corruption!
Here is a one sample of emails where data was requested and then denied because Phil didn’t want the researcher to “find something wrong with it” Suck it up Phil that is the foundation of true science. Allowing others to verify or falsify you work. You decide if Phil is hiding.

Warwick Hughes to Phil Jones, September ‘04:

Dear Phillip and Chris Folland (with your IPCC hat on), Some days ago Chris I emailed to Tom Karl and you replied re the grid cells in north Siberia with no stations, yet carrying red circle grid point anomalies in the TAR Fig 2.9 global maps. I even sent a gif file map showing the grid cells barren of stations greyed out. You said this was due to interpolation and referred me to Phillip and procedures described in a submitted paper. In the last couple of days I have put up a page detailing shortcomings in your TAR Fig 2.9 maps in the north Siberian region, everything is specified there with diagrams and numbered grid points.
[1] One issue is that two of the interpolated grid cells have larger anomalies than the parent cells !!!!????? This must be explained.

[2] Another serious issue is that obvious non-homogenous warming in Olenek and Verhojansk is being interpolated through to adjoining grid cells with no stations, like cancer.

[3] The third serious issue is that the urbanization affected trend from the Irkutsk grid cell neare Lake Baikal, looks to be interpolated into its western neighbour.
I am sure there are many other cases of this, 2 and 3 happening. Best regards, Warwick Hughes (I have sent this to CKF)

Phil to Warwick, same email:
Warwick, I did not think I would get a chance today to look at the web page. I see what boxes you are referring to. The interpolation procedure cannot produce larger anomalies than neighbours (larger values in a single month). If you have found any of these I will investigate. If you are talking about larger trends then that is a different matter. Trends say in Fig 2.9 for the 1976-99 period require 16 years to have data and at least 10 months in each year. It is conceivable that at there are 24 years in this period that missing values in some boxes influence trend calculation. I would expect this to be random across the globe.
Warwick, Been away. Just checked my program and the interpolation shouldn’t produce larger anomalies than the neighbouring cells. So can you send me the cells, months and year of the two cells you’ve found ? If I have this I can check to see what has happened and answer (1). As for (2) and (3) we compared all stations with neighbours and these two stations did not have problems when the work was done (around 1985/6). I am not around much for the next 3 weeks but will be here most of this week and will try to answer (1) if I get more details. If you have the names of stations that you’ve compared Olenek and Verhojansk with I would appreciate that.

Cheers Phil

Then later Phil Jones famously replied:

Subject: Re: WMO non respondo … Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. …
Cheers Phil

Following this there are several emails about how Phil and others discuss how to evade FOI requests. I can post those if anyone wants to read them. How can this be anything other than corruption of the very foundation of science requiring independent replication or results?!?! Shame on Yale for trying to sweep this under the rug.

I find it shocking that anyone could go through the climategate files and “find very little”.

I found scientists selecting or rejecting data based on their preconceptions, software that modified data to produce a desired result (effectively falsification of results), corrupting the peer review process, strong-arming journals and editors to reject papers, and conspiring to withhold and/or destroy data to avoid Freedom of Information rules. I’m sure there are other things that could be added to the list.

The behaviour exemplified in these emails and other files is diametrically the opposite of the scientific method, not to mention unethical and probably also illegal. What makes it even more significant is that these scientists are in a very influential position in the climate science community and also within the IPCC so their results have potentially massive economic ramifications.

I consider what they have done to be nothing short of a breach of trust and a crime against humanity. The scientists in question should be stripped of their positions within their respective institutions and criminally charged.

Additionally, the IPCC should be disbanded immediately.

Just to be clear, I am a professional engineer. I do not believe the earth is flat or that it is only 4000 years old. I do not believe the lunar landings took place on a Hollywood set. I do not believe H1N1 is a conspiracy. What this comes down to for me is that climate scientists crossed the line and became advocates. Not only that, but they were played by politicians to support a predetermined conclusion that could be used to justify massive new bureaucracy and taxation. If you honestly believe in AGW and that I am a “denier”, all I can say is that if you don’t think politicians have a motive for putting global CO2 emission regulations into place, then who is the denier?

Stopped buying Nature years ago.They took up advocating and ignoring science.No data means no science.The failure to publish source data and computer codes where used has been shameful.Nature failed the test of crediblity by allowing authors to publish,without archiving their data.To excuse the behaviour apparent in the emails,is to expose your own lack of ethics and failure to comprehend the ethos of science.To corrupt the beauty of the method is to have no science.All studies built upon or involving team IPCC is suspect,what evidence of unusual warming or CO2 as an agent there of remains?

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About Chris Mooney

Chris is a science and political journalist and commentator and the author of three books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science--dubbed "a landmark in contemporary political reporting" by Salon.com and a "well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the right wing's assault on science and scientists" by Scientific American--Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. They also write "The Intersection" blog together for Discover blogs.
For a longer bio and contact information, see here.